On Tue, 2002-05-21 at 15:39, Alastair Scott wrote: > Mind you, the Stallman piece is interesting; his line is that, as Linux > contains rather a lot of GNU material, it should be called GNU/Linux > and not enough credit is given for the involvement. > > He also has a characteristic argument that binary-only drivers (here > comes the Alcatel Speedtouch USB once again :) violate the GPL so > should be reverse-engineered and rewritten under the GPL to maintain a > 'pure' 'free' Linux and, by a rhetorical trick, manages to blame Linus > Torvalds for this situation. > > The extremity of his arguments is most unusual and refreshing but, in > the end, self-defeating because the arguments are not convincing; there > are much more important things to do than writing device drivers twice.
At first glance, Stallman's position seems extreme. Until, that is, you consider Microshaft's position in the market today, which threatens everything. To the extent that RMS saw this coming and knew it was a danger, AND DID something about it, RMS stands alone. Microshaft maintains it's monopoly based solely on the premise that it's software is not free; and with that wedge they are on the verge of destabilizing/controlling the world. RMS saw this freight train coming a long time ago, way before M$ was a viable company, and now it's barreling down on us while we look at each other and say, "what?" Now in this article he's warning us about non-free software in other areas. My personal opinion is that although he seems rather extreme at times, it's merely because he's ahead of his time. These are problems that will come to pass either sooner or later if allowed to continue; it's just a matter of time. > And anyone in a campaigning position has to destroy the self and not get > into wrangles about names, precedence, purity of motive and so on; once > you start doing that people switch off and you're finished :/ Hmmmm. I cannot say that I agree on that count. First of all one of the provisions built into the GNU standard itself is the principle that all previous authors of any software under the domain of the GNU license be given credit for work on said software. It naturally follows (by the core spirit of the license) that the GNU project itself should be given some kind of recognition for the foundation it provided for Linux. Second, and more to the point, there are quite a few people that have heard and listened to Richard Stallman. All you have to do is to do a search on Google for GNU/Linux. You find, for instance, the Debian distribution: http://www.debian.org/doc/ You also find O'Reilly books; this is a list of occurrances of the term "GNU/Linux" on the O'Reilly books website: http://www.oreillynet.com/search/index.ncsp?sp-q=Gnu%2Flinux&sp-k=all Some it may switch off, but for those who listen to what he has to say, the arguments are convinceable. There has been considerable headway achieved. Now...the other side of the coin. I agree with you to the extent that RMS's arguments would be much more convincing if stated in a different light. For instance, if he would demonstrate a viable economic model (even theoretical) showing how an open sourcer could make a concrete living. In short, an economic model for open source coders. This would lend an extreme amount of credence to his positions. Addressing the topic of Linus and RMS, I think this chest beating thing is doing neither one of them any good. They each have had negative slanted public rhetoric for the other. Ideally, the both of them would be able to sit down privately and hash something out that allowed an option for compromising neither of their value systems. This would exponentially increase their leverage against the Microjunk monster. As a team they would conceivably be invincible. What, they each can code us to the moon but simultaneously they are socially paralyzed by their ideals or lack thereof? Or social skills, or lack thereof? Can somebody cast a spell, please? The following excerpt is the main reason I posted this thread: "We have partial freedom today, but our freedom is not secure. It is threatened by the CBDTPA (formerly SSSCA), by the Broadcast "Protection" Discussion Group (see http://www.eff.org/) which proposes to prohibit free software to access digital TV broadcasts, by software patents (Europe is now considering whether to have software patents), by Microsoft nondisclosure agreements for vital protocols, and by everyone who tempts us with a non-free program that is "better" (technically) than available free programs. We can lose our freedom again just as we lost it the first time, if we don't care enough to protect it." Best Regards, LX -- ��������������������������������������������������� Kernel 2.4.8-26mdk Mandrake Linux 8.1 Enlightenment 0.16.5 Evolution 1.02 Registered Linux User #268899 http://counter.li.org/ ���������������������������������������������������
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